


nine lives

by fatiguedfern



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon, Spoilers, i guess, shirogane isn't there for that long, this has nothing to do with cats, unfortunately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 14:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10946049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatiguedfern/pseuds/fatiguedfern
Summary: He becomes a god





	nine lives

When he was younger, Rantarou spent a great deal of time staring into a mirror.

It wasn’t that his face had been anything special. No, it had been the opposite. 

His face was soft and rounded, his hair a patch of mousy hair half-obscuring the muted green of his eyes. Nothing special. Completely ordinary. 

Disgustingly ordinary.

/  
He’s thirteen when he finally manages to scrape together the money and courage to buy a cheap bottle of hair dye from a street vendor two blocks down from their dingy apartment.

The dye colours his hair an off light green and flecks the tiled surface of the shower, but he doesn’t pay the hidings and detentions he’s given any heed. The people he passes in the streets spare him a glance and his name is whispered through the halls of his school, too small to worry the students with anything more scandalous.

He’s _seen_.

/  
The rusted gears of his bike grate together as Rantarou skids across rain-slicked pavements and through bustling traffic. He’s tempted to dismount the bike, but safety hazards be damned, he was late as is. He refused to have gotten up at such an ungodly hour for nothing.

The venue where the interviews were held was a good 10 kilometres away from his district and there was no way that he was risking his mother catching wind of his true motives by begging for the money for a train ticket.

He appears to be in luck; the queue snakes all the way around the building and back and he isn’t late. He isn’t really all that surprised, _DanganRonpa_ had been ridiculously popular for all his sixteen years of living.

The day wastes away into dusk before Rantarou reaches the sign-up sheet. The numerous papers are scrawled fill with names that would be lost amongst the rest of the mundane masses. 

But not his. 

No, Amami Rantarou, now signed in still-wet blue ink on the sheet, was a name that was surely meant for greater things. 

/  
His body is sprawled out across the cool floor and he groggily pushes himself up into a sitting position and rubs at his throbbing temples. 

Regaining his bearings, he looks around the classroom and in all honesty, it’s the oddest classroom he’s ever seen. He uses the wall as a guide before exiting the heavy mahogany doors. 

The halls are coated in a mess of stripes and swirls that make his head swim. He keeps his feet as firmly planted to the ground as he is able to. Distant voices cut through the fog filling his stupor driven mind.

The voices grow louder and more desperate as he draws nearer to their source; the source being a run-down gym that Rantarou’s hesitant to enter. Nonetheless, as much as he’d rather not, he pushes through the doors.

He’s greeted with the sight of fifteen others who appear to be around his age. The group is a fair mix of unique individuals, but before Rantarou can hope to extract whatever information that he can by way of half-hearted greetings, a two-toned bear makes an entrance.

The bear’s speech is unnecessarily long-winded, but the contents has Rantarou wishing he had remained slumped on the floor. Seems like his so-called luck had run out.

/  
It had been easy enough staying behind as his in-game friends had left (it’d been his part as protagonist after all), but dealing with the consequences of the in-game Rantarou’s decision was not. 

He’d barricaded himself into the small room provided by _Team DanganRonpa_ for two weeks now; not having the energy to greet the people who’d watched with bright eyes as he had trudged through the pre-set bloodied path. So he lays in the motionlessly for the most part.

The bed’s soft and the sheets warm, but he still doesn’t sleep a wink. Disembodied voices echo throughout the room. His dead classmates whispering, _screaming_ at him. And he drowns; sputters in the sea of _save me_ ’s that he’ll never reply to.

/  
The room’s spinning and Rantarou’s leaning heavily against his podium. Everything seems so familiar; the mastermind’s smile is hardly as unsettling as it should be and he doesn’t once look away during their execution.

And then it all ends far too soon and _his friends_ leave him to rot in the school building. 

And he’s alone again. Alone and unseen. 

/  
He’s asked what it’s like living through _DanganRonpa_ a third time and he almost laughs out loud. Surely they understood that he’s untouchable by now?

Surely they understood that no matter how many times he’s thrown into their gilded cage, he’d break free?

Surely they understood that he’s a god now; immortalised in their very own sordid tabloids.

/  
His fourth game comes and passes without much flourish (or without more than the norm). He’s gained an even larger fan base to grovel at his feet and everywhere he goes worshipping eyes follow him. 

But no matter what he does he’s still shackled to his past as a little mousy-haired boy whose worst fear had been something as fickle as isolation.

 _Amami_ the voices of his adorers and demons cry alike. 

Amami. A name shared with a boy no older than ten and a woman trudging through life in boots with worn-out soles and struggling to pay rent on her single bedroom apartment. 

And so, he found himself darkening a doorstep he hadn’t seen in four years with a stack of papers clasped in his clammy palms.

He raps his knuckles across the door’s chipped wood in uneven, uneasy knocks. There’s a rattling of keys and then the door is creaking open to reveal his mother’s weary face. 

The woman hasn’t changed, other than a few added streaks of grey running through her hair, and neither has the faded yellow walls of the living room. Rantarou can almost see a tuft of brown hair almost identical to his character in the first season’s hairstyle; more disconcerting is that the hair is coloured similarly to what his brother’s was.

The woman hasn’t taken her eyes off of him since she opened the door and is staring at him with a mixture of hope and disbelief. His hands are trembling slightly now as he hands over the envelope containing his half-hearted letter of explanation and bribery money along with the change of name application forms.

But he’s a god and it’s effortless to walk away. It’s effortless to ignore the woman’s own cries of _Rantarou_. It’s effortless to accept that the woman’s face would join the ranks of the other demons that plagued his mind.

/  
He’s a year into his twenties and supposedly getting too old for _DanganRonpa_ , but Rantarou’s characters are arguably some of the most popular characters since Komaeda himself and the executives are reluctant to get rid of him so easily. 

_Nothing a facelift can’t fix_ they say. 

And gods are never depicted with the exact same face.

/  
After his sixth season, he isn’t the only cast member set to return for the seventh season. 

The girl sits across from him in their shared _Team DanganRonpa_ provided apartment. She’s tiredly tapping her brightly coloured nails (she’d been the in-game SHSL Manicurist and it appears that the talent stuck with; hell, dogs have even started following Rantarou after his own stint as the SHSL Dog Whisperer) and Rantarou is on the edge of throttling her right then and there.

“Hey, Amami, how’d you do it? Survive through all those seasons? Watch as everyone died again and again and again?”

Rantarou glances up from his tea at the broken silence; then tilts his head downwards again. He honestly has no idea how to answer her. He can’t give her an answer that she’d want to hear. 

But he never does get to answer her anyway as she saws through her wrists with a nail file the very same night.

/  
He becomes the SHSL Adventurer in his seventh game and it quickly became one of his favourite talents. Odd how he still has faint memories of climbing mountains in Kenya when he hasn’t even left Japan before.

He decides that he’d put an end to that and books a flight for the next week. Pity _Team DanganRonpa_ would probably have nullified the flight by morning. At least it allows him to feel some semblance of freedom for a moment.

/  
He’s received numerous letters (all discarded after a quick scan through, of course) from his brother since his departure and no one could say that No-Longer-Amami Hiroshi wasn’t persistent.

It isn’t until he receives an excited letter shortly after the end of his eighth season exclaiming his brother’s excitement at the possibility of finally auditioning for the 54th season and become just like Rantarou.

It’s then and there that he decides to end the series at the 53rd before the 54th could end his brother; mere mortal or not.

/  
Rantarou had decided to scope out the interviews, hoping to learn anything he could about potential participants, but before he can settle himself into his post, he’s approached by a blue-haired girl.

The excitement filling her dull eyes seems out of place and the undertone of desperation that cloys to her is unsettlingly familiar to Rantarou. She’s holding out a copy of _DanganRonpa the 44th Season: Collector’s Edition_ for him to presumably sign. He takes the pen from the girl’s outstretched hand. 

He leaves her with Amami Rantarou signed in still-wet blue ink.

/  
He’s about to die. His fragmented memories of killing games tell him as much. 

He recognises the stench of desperation as it approaches; can practically see the need to play god glinting in dull blue eyes. He wants to warn her about the risks of playing god; warn her about how easily the true gods behind this game can crush her beneath their collective heel, but he doesn’t say anything. 

After all, dead men don’t tell tales.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah. That was a mess. Secondly, thought to add that I chose not to use his large mentioned family, because after so many seasons in this Amami's probably changed his backstory so many times that I didn't want to use anything that was actually mentioned, (Also, I was too lazy to write so many descriptions.)


End file.
